YouTube Harassment: How To Handle Jerks

No one is invisible when it comes to YouTube harassment. Every YouTube channel, from small to big, has had to deal with it’s fair share of ridiculous people attempting 2/10 trolls on their videos or in their livestreams. When it comes to YouTube harassment, there are a few ways to prevent it, and a few ways to snuff it out entirely.

We recommend trying to reason with harassers first, as they sometimes don’t realize what they are doing is offensive, but if you gotta ban, then you ban hard and without mercy.

Basic Trolls And Profane Comments

Ninety percent of YouTube harassment cases fall under this category because most trolls flit from channel to channel with their general tomfoolery until they get banned or ignored. They don’t stick around because if they are not being entertained (by getting a rise out of you), or they get banned, they move to the next channel.

These are barely even worth your time to report,

as they are generally throw away accounts, and the person

will just turn around and create another one with a fake email.

If you see someone in your comments posting profanity, or just being a general douchecanoe, flag them as spam, block them from your channel and move on. You’ve got content to create, and no amount of silly trolling is going to stop you!

Consistent YouTube Harassment

This is where things start getting a bit more complicated. Let’s say you’ve blocked a person, but they keep creating accounts to harass you on your channel or through private messages. Perhaps this person is even going so far as to consistently harass you over social media. What do you do?

Mjolnir ain’t got time for this.

You can, and should, report these people through various means, and keeps copies of these reports and the dates you filed them. You can report harassment through any number of avenues, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and many others. Almost every single social media website, if not all of them, has a way to report online harassment and get the accounts, sometimes on an IP level. You should contact them and report whomever is harassing you, and they will take care of it.

Serious Personal Life Violations

While the chances of it happening are quite slim, sometimes, you just can’t shake an online harasser, and they actually start harassing you in real life. With the development of Twitch swattings, among other terrible “pranks” that trolls and hackers pull, the FBI and law enforcement are taking online harassment and bullying far more seriously. This is why I mentioned before that you should keep a record of every single time you report these harassers, because, if the situation escalates into something far more serious, you will need to report it to the police.

If someone is threatening your life and safety,

or the life and safety of others you know,

you need to report it to your local authorities.

I mean this. If someone is threatening your life and safety, or the life and safety of others you know, you need to report it to your local authorities. However, some words to the wise, the police will expect well-kept records of the ongoing harassment, as they will need to build a case, and you will need to have enough information to identify the harasser. This includes all of their social media profile information and any other information you may have on their identity.

Do not show them this as evidence. This is serious-time.

This is a very serious road to go down, and you need to make sure you are prepared if you are going to walk it. Evidence is key in this, and the more you have, the better. Thankfully, this is a worst case scenario, so many YouTubers will not have to deal with this level of YouTube harassment.

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Experiencing YouTube harassment can be an unnerving and angering event. Due to the anonymity of the internet, trolls can be cruel to almost anyone, and face barely any repercussion for it. While laws are starting to catch up, it can still be unclear how content creators in the public eye are supposed to handle it. Hopefully our blog post here helps you out with any “troll infestations” you may have, if any, on your channel.

As always, if you see someone being cyber-bullied, call the bully out on their malarkey. We all need to band together so that YouTube becomes a better place for all content creators. When in doubt, call them out. Most trolls don’t like the spotlight! We’ll see you next week, gamers, with an awesome post about how to choose your custom URL for your YouTube channel.